"I am always happy to take credit where blame is due."--John Davis Frain

Friday, June 22, 2018

Darius the Great Flash Fiction contest

Long time blog readers may remember Adib Khorram, a regular commenter and contest entrant from several years back.

If you're wondering what happened to him, he was busy writing a novel.

I managed to steal an Advance Review Copy. I shimmied up the exterior drainpipe, lowered myself through the chimney and found a copy cleverly concealed on a bookshelf in his agent's pied a terre. I started reading in the paddy wagon.

Let's just say, I'm not surprised Adib wrote a great book, not surprised at all. But I'm totally in awe of his story telling skills, his command of craft, and how real yet entertaining this book is. In other words, this is a total sox knocker for 2018. I'm not alone in my opinion: Darius the Great is Not Okay was also a BuzzBook pick at BEA this year. That's a pretty singular honor: only five or six books are chosen.

It goes on sale in August, but I'm glad to start talking about it early AND give away this purloined ARC to the winner of the flash fiction contest this weekend

The usual rules apply:

1. Write a story using 100 words or fewer.

2. Use these words in the story:
Iran
Adib
tea
dad
great

Steve Forti must also incorporate this prompt word: infusion

3. You must use the whole word, but that whole word can be part of a larger word. The letters for the
prompt must appear in consecutive order. They cannot be backwards.
Thus: tea/teal is ok, but dad/dead is not.

4. Post the entry in the comment column of THIS blog post.

5. One entry per person. If you need a mulligan (a do-over) erase your entry and post again. It helps to work out your entry first, then post.

6. International entries are allowed, but prizes may vary for international addresses.

7. Titles count as part of the word count (you don't need a title)

8. Under no circumstances should you tweet anything about your particular entry to me. Example: "Hope you like my entry about Felix Buttonweezer!" This is grounds for disqualification.

8a. There are no circumstances in which it is ok to ask for feedback from ME on your contest entry. NONE. (You can however discuss your entry with the commenters in the comment trail...just leave me out of it.)

9. It's ok to tweet about the contest generally.
Example: "I just entered the flash fiction contest on Janet's blog and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt"

11. You agree that your contest entry can remain posted on the blog for the life of the blog. In other words, you can't later ask me to delete the entry and any comments about the entry at a later date.

12. The stories must be self-contained. That is: do not include links or footnotes to explain any part of the story. Those extras will not be considered part of the story.

Contest opens: 6:43am, Saturday, June 23, 2018

Contest closes: 9am, Sunday, June 24, 2018

If you're wondering how what time it is in NYC right now, here's the clock

Sneers twist boyish faces. Months of dismissing me as a statue, my pole still like the water’s surface, emotions swirling defiantly below, they thought I was daydreaming. I was studying.From their springtime teasing, I ran. There are other ponds. But today, though fish are summer-sluggish and addling jeers stir my calm cast, I stay, sensing life ripple the murky depths. The fish will come. A dibbing line bobs against mine. He thinks it’s properly baited. Ha!They call the great tug, “girls’ dumb luck.” As my fingers twirl around the reel, I reply, “The skill of a fisherwoman.”

It was an innocent question over tea. Why? It is heard all the time, this time it struck Adib in the gut.

He could not find an answer. From his Dad he had learned humility and compassion. Those did not answer either. The rest of his world taught him eighteen kinds of hate, including the self-hate of the damaged. Those didn’t convey the right answer, either.

He searched more widely, to no avail. He headed for his ancestral homeland, Iran, a land he didn’t know. He looked at a ruined land and the little why grew to a great why.

Ira noodled over the problem.Kugel without cinnamon?His mother’s kugel always had cinnamon.Should he mention it, or…maybe not.She’d squawk like a cockatoo -“Mama’s boy!”A dibble plunged in the eardrum – that’s what her protest would be, allowing yet another seed of discord to sprout.As if their life weren’t already a great jungle of misery.No – best keep his trap shut so “The Mistake,” as his mother called her,wouldn’t clutch her tea and moan loud enough to wake the Dead.Or Dad, as I used to call him.Until he complained about mother’s kugel.

Well, I was waiting for the train, doing a puzzle and got really stumped. Six letters. Starts with “t.” ‘Not infusion tea.’ Then I ran into this egghead. He said, “Tisane.” He said he’s applying for a job here.

Mustaffah—an Iranian-born Istanbul hustler—took snakes from his young son Adib and scanned the crowd for tourists. He particularly sought those intoxicated by the open sacks of cinnamon, cardamom, and tea at their feet. Bonus if they were repulsed by the wasp-covered candy that would, with luck, comprise Adib’s lunch.The snakes quickly encircled an elderly American neck. Ostensibly, she would pay for a photo-op but, in reality, she would pay to be snake-free.But...“Great. I always wanted a snake.” Adib giggled while his dad bartered for the return of their serpentine meal-tickets.No Turkish Delight today.

“God is great!” Yelled in Arabic before the satellite feed died. The Iranian had used intermediaries. And escaped.“Dad, Mr. Sukarno left a note.” I never could hear the doorbell.“He’s here?”“Had to run.” My son’s almost my height. And less awkward by the day. We smiled.He ambled downstairs, and I unfolded the note. Spied the word “Adib.” Teacher, in Indonesian. I didn’t read the rest.Sukarno had quipped Adib would stand for “All Dead In Bali.” God, my entire network.“I’ll get it!”I hadn’t heard the doorbell.It was too late for friendly visitors.

Adib rejected his dad's call for the twelfth time. He visualised his dad, a great talker, sitting in the scalding hot Iranian sun still drinking scalding hot tea; complaining of the heat to the neighbours who'd stopped to chat. If only it were that simple. Adib's hands shook. Was he going out of his mind?The phone rang once more. Adib flung it to the furthest corner of the room. Was it not he, thirteen years ago, who'd ensured the gesture was made? The man whose voice they would all miss would have his phone buried with him.

It felt like a Roman decemvir and the Spanish Inquisition had merged into one entity when I got home to face my parents’ wrath. You’d have thought it was a dibble instead of a tack I’d accidentally left on my teacher’s chair. It’s not my fault she sat on it. The lady’s bats anyway. She kept blathering on and on about meagre attributes when everyone knows that sharks prefer whiskey with a side of Godiva chocolate. Dad was beginning to crack a grin, but Mom still looked like she smelled something fishy.

‘....bat-s*** crazy!’‘....sometimes “spilling the tea” just makes a mess.’

‘Jimmy, you play a crime-fighting cactus. How did you prepare for the role?’‘Well, it seemed greatly comparable to the presidential nominations, so I ran. Winning unfortunately delayed the release, but I hope my years in office made the movie what it is today’.

‘......breathtaking’‘......acting IS art’

‘Debbie, you’re the only woman up for the inaugural gender-neutral Oscar. Who are you wearing?’‘I like to believe I’m wearing the hopes of women everywhere’‘Absolutely, absolutely. Get that Adib?’‘Great, got it. So, how do you balance work and family?’

Dad ran, I ran, Adib ran but we couldn’t run fast enough. We raced the bombs and lost. Now none of us run. Dad and Adib no longer breathe, nor do I when the memories return. Those are my dark times when tears fall and I wish I too could sleep forever. The doctors say I am making great strides in my recovery, will soon be mobile; able to return to the shell of my home, to the race without end. I hear the starting gun fire outside, the sound of other feet pounding towards us. Like me, they lose.

No one knows exactly how The Great Iranian Dog and Pony Show earned its moniker, mostly because the event itself has nothing to do with what the title would lead you to believe. An annual tea bazaar put on by the Catholic Women’s League.

Gertie was in charge of the tea. The guy who sold it said, “You’ll have mad adventures.”

Gertie thought he said, “Glad dentures,” which sounded good to her.

“It’s peyote.”

“Sounds Asian,” said Gertie.

At the church hall, Gertie, with her top off and standing on a table screamed, “Adib, adib adib, that’s all folks!”

“…the name?”“Shirin.”The corners of his eyes crinkled.“How did you get this name? Your dad?”“My mum.”Each time I entered Adib’s shop we talked more, shared lives linked by heritage.He’d emigrated from Iran, drank tea made from fresh mint leaves.When I asked, “Teach me Farsi?” his eyes crinkled.“Great, great,” he said.He called me “sweetie” in the toast at my wedding.I called him “uncle” at his daughter’s graduation.We called his name when they stole him from his shop. No answer.Tears were fire in my throat.I’d never known ICE could burn.

No one at The Reef saw it coming. Although everyone was shocked when Forti ran away with Frain’s manuscript. Perhaps a Dib Membrane moment of obsession with John’s ghostly pale complexion? Who knows. But a great brouhaha ensued.

Smith took a shot at easing the tension by telling “dad” jokes. The Reider collective eye-roll caused a shift in the tides around Carkoon.

It finally required an infusion of murmurings and incantations from Luna, Bobrow, and Faris to restore the peace.

“I need a bad idea,” I ranted at the screen. That’s how it all began. A FB post, amidst tears, snot, some bourbon. I’ve done great things in my 32 years, but the only thing mother gives me credit for now, is the affair. Mother is an artist, and I am her Dadaistic masterpiece, she says-sexually subversive spawn. A dibble of holes to her self righteous head feels a tad extreme. Sigh. I’ll name the baby after her instead. #mothersanddaughters

Minutes left to enter a beginning and end-of story contest.The words: Iran, Adib, tea, dad, great.Some easy some difficult, I can do this. Behind me another voice in the room, TV, spitting news as vile as acid. Who are we? All I had to do was think away from the news. The words should have been tears, heartbreak, despair, fear, welcome.Wait, this is just a contest, not a real test. But it won’t stop.Ten minutes, f*** an edit.This is not a story, it’s a nightmare.Done.I lose. We lose.

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